Beyond Organic Local Farm Products

Chicken Tractors

The chicks are growing quickly and will soon be ready to live outside. Unfortunately, our busy work schedules preclude us from completing their main coop before they will be ready to venture outdoors. To meet their short-term outdoor needs we opted to build a chicken tractor that they could reside in until the main coop and run are complete.

Our first chicken tractor was a combination of past projects that we harvested for pieces. The main frame was based on our cold-frame project that we had not used since moving from the town-house. The access door and much of the hardware cloth was harvested from our old beehive-chicken coops we had at the town-house as well. The remaining pieces were from miscellaneous projects or leftover scraps allowing us to build the entire tractor with zero cost.

The size was not quite large enough for 20 full size chickens so we opted to build a new chicken tractor that could hold the entire flock, yet was simple enough to build quickly. We also wanted it to be useful for other uses other than temporary chicken raising so we are building it to be a full-size meat chicken tractor that would allow us to raise up to 50 meat chickens in it very efficiently. For now we just have the frame complete, next weekend we’ll finish up with the chicken wire, pull supports, roof, and eventually add bucket waterers and feeders. If you are interested in being part of our meat chicken co-op we are now taking orders, so reserve your organic chicken tractor raised chickens now by sending us a message, you can help process them too!